


Fishing for Love

by Artemis1000



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Crack, Sentient Tentacle Monster, Treat, Urban Fantasy, dating game show, ridiculously cute tentacle creature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-05 02:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11568762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Matthew will never forget that one time he ended up on a very tentacled dating show.





	Fishing for Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tish/gifts).



> I'm half convinced you were just joking when you prompted "Unexpected contestant on a dating game show" but I couldn't resist the perfect opportunity to write you tentacle crack. I'm sorry.

It would be a lie to say that Matthew had volunteered to go on a dating game show, but it would be just as much of a lie to imply that he’d fought against it. This, like so many things in his life, had simply happened to him, and truth be told he usually found himself a little bit bewildered just how or why they happened, or why to him.

Alright, this time he had the answer. Anne, his little sister, had a truly lethal combination of terrible sense of humor and desire to be helpful.

Thus, here he was, being dragged along by a very irate young woman wielding a clipboard, who had all but assaulted him while he was just trying to find a cup of coffee in the catacomb maze beneath the studios.

Technically speaking, he knew that he wasn’t supposed to leave the room he’d been put in, but he’d needed a change of scenery after he’d spent so long getting copious amounts of gel smeared into his blond hair till it stood up in spikes so sharp you could probably kill a man with them, and getting tutted at when the powder brush made him sneeze and getting more tutted at over his clothes – but he’d drawn the line at changing, the Sharkman t-shirt was his lucky shirt.

“…I can’t believe you would be so irresponsible! You can’t wander off, it’s a live show, and we can’t go on air one bachelor short!”

She hadn’t even asked for his name, just taken one look at his Sharkman shirt, grabbed him by the arm, shook him, and demanded, “Please tell me you’re my fish guy!”

He had shrugged and muttered that he was. He was here for _Fishing for Love_ , the channel’s, maybe the world’s first fishing-themed dating show. It sounded silly, but if Matthew was going to make a fool of himself on TV, he might as well do it while meeting a girl who shared his interests.

He was dragged through the maze of corridors, and if it didn’t look like the way he had come, Matthew didn’t worry overly much about it. He’d wandered off very far in his attempts to find the way back.

 

“…and here, Mila, is your candidate number three!”

Before he knew it, he was given a shove by the same clipboard-wielding assistant and found himself stumbling into a studio that was too brightly lit for comfort.

There had been no time left for proper instructions or introductions backstage, so he was winging it, waving to the crowd though he wasn’t paying attention to them, far too caught up by the other two men in the dating game.

Three chairs, the one to the far left empty. He took it and tried not to stare at the bright blue tentacles candidate #2 had curled around the legs of her chair.

There was a wall to their left, presumably separating them from the bachelorette they would be competing for.

One sneaky glance out of the far corner of his eyes confirmed that candidate #1 was another cephalopod. So was the moderator of the show, an intimidating kraken who was lifting himself up on a veritable swathe of tentacles, some more delicate ones lifting into the air to emphasize a point as he welcomed the audience.

Even most of the audience was one kind of marine species or another, they were really going all out with the theme here.

Matthew didn’t hear a word the moderator said.

His last term paper had been on suction cups, and his brain was suddenly insisting he needed to recall every last detail on it. He always fell into self-distraction tactics when he was nervous.

A poke against his leg yanked him out of his ever more frantic thoughts.

“…introduce yourself? Hello, dreamer, someone in there?”

“Huh? Huh?” He blinked. “Oh. Um. I’m Matthew, I’m 23, I’m working on my Masters in Marine Biology. I…” He’d practiced this with Anne ad nauseum. He didn’t remember a word of it. “I’m into sea life? That’s why we’re all here, right?” He forced a laugh at his own joke and pumped all his willpower into not dying from embarrassment.

There were a few appreciative hollers in the crowd, but they didn’t make him feel any better.

Or make this entire thing less _fishy_ , for lack of a better term.

The moderator’s frown had deepened, he looked both very annoyed and on the verge of panicking. Matthew felt a little bit bad, in his place he would be fed up with such jokes, too.

The show went on, mercilessly.

 

“…and I’ve never once been to a concert I didn’t love. So now that you know I’m a music nerd, why don’t you tell me your number one passion, mystery suitors?”

The bachelorette had a very nice voice.

Number one loved books, number two had a mad love for skydiving.

“Well, I guess…” Matthew scratched his head and shrugged sheepishly. “I’m pretty boring and predictable. I spend my free time near the water, too. Fishing. Sailing. I have this dumb dream of sailing around the world, but everyone who’s been twice on a boat has that, so… I like cooking?”

“Seafood?” Mila quipped.

He snickered, even through his blush. “That, too, but, no, actually I love cooking soups. It’s just so relaxing, you know? You’ve only got one pot to mind. It’s like cooking meditation or something.” He chuckled sheepishly. “Tell me, am I making it worse?”

Mila’s peals of laughter filled the studio. “You just introduced yourself by saying you’re here to get some tentacle action, number three, I don’t think you can make it _worse_!”

“Yeah, that…” And now everyone was laughing, even the moderator, and willing yourself not to die from sheer embarrassment was becoming a real challenge. “I suck at public speaking?”

“You sure do, number three!”

No doubt about it: he was tanking it.

 

Somehow, he wasn’t tanking it.

Or he was, and Mystery Woman liked a good laugh at his expense.

Until proven wrong, Matthew would bet on the latter, but he still wasn’t tanking it.

No, quite the opposite.

Here he was, standing in front of the garish pink hearts-themed cardboard wall and waiting to get his first glimpse at Mila.

He didn’t know what to expect, didn’t even have anything to base a guess on.

All he knew was she loved swimming and catching fish and loved terrible jokes for one reason or another.

The wall revealed a beaming heart-shaped face framed by a nest of strange-looking sea-green braids. She lifted herself up to her tiptoes… and higher.

“Hi!”

She had started out a full head shorter than him, but now she was at eye level with him. Matthew looked down.

Where her legs should have been was a mass of greenish tentacles, which she was now lazily uncurling. Thick, sturdy tentacles unfolded to their full length, letting her raise herself in height, while thinner tentacles unfurled elegantly to curl in the air around her, a few of them coyly reaching towards him and withdrawing before they could brush his legs.

“Um. Hi?”

She sounded more nervous now, and when Matthew looked into her face again, he did so just in time to see her bite her bottom lip with sharpened teeth.

“Hi,” he croaked out.

The moderator was blathering on, something about a romantic weekend trip, but Matthew’s brain remained firmly stuck on the tentacles.

The mess of not-braids on her head started writhing, too, and wasn’t that a Medusa thing?

“I really fucked up with the sea life joke, huh?”

Mila giggled. One of her delicate thin tentacles, a vivid bright green, brushed coyly against his pant leg. “ _Real bad_ , yeah.”

His face burned. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“…tune in again next week for an exciting new episode of _Fishing for Love_!”

As soon as the cameras shut off, the moderator turned to Matthew with a withering glare. “I don’t know who you are or what you are doing here, but you are not Kristian, the Swedish shark man with a love for red wine and Jacuzzis!”

Matthew tore his gaze away from Mila and blinked at him. “…no?”

A tentacle curled around his wrist, and squeezed gently.

It felt kind of strange, but not bad-strange. Just unusual. It wasn’t like he didn’t know anyone like her, he just didn’t often get tugged at with tentacles.

“Well, I like him!” Mila huffed. “He’s cute!” She wrinkled her nose. “Even if he’s got legs, but nobody’s perfect!”

Matthew tried very hard not to feel like an adopted pet.

As if she could sense his thoughts, she patted his hand and flashed him a reassuring smile. Or, it would have been more reassuring if not for her very sharp-toothed smile.

He felt a flutter low in his belly that had little to do with the sensible concern he should be feeling. The tentacle tightened around his wrist, and another one wrapped around his ankle. It was… He gulped. That wasn’t bad either.

“Shouldn’t we be leaving now?” Mila chirped. “You said we’ve won a weekend trip.”

Right. An entire weekend just Mila and him. He felt his face heat up.

Mila’s shark grin widened.


End file.
